


seven devils

by hellsstar (sabrinachill)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Demonic Possession, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrinachill/pseuds/hellsstar
Summary: It’s 1:47 in the morning and Zari is staring at a disheveled blond man in a trench coat sprawled on the designer couch in the middle of her otherwise immaculate living room.His dirty boots are propped on her sleek, modern coffee table. The whiskey on his breath is warring with the lavender-scented diffusers tucked discreetly on a wall shelf.And he’s smoking, of all things.Zari clutches her silk robe closer around her chest and narrows her eyes.“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”He exhales, a long stream of smoke twisting and curling as it rises toward her vaulted ceiling.“Proving just how much you need me, love.”***An AU wherein Zari is a celebrity being stalked by a demonic entity and John offers his services as an infernal bodyguard.
Relationships: John Constantine/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Comments: 88
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title blatantly stolen from the song of the same name by Florence + the Machine, which may or may not have been played on repeat during the writing of this story.
> 
> The plan is to update with short(ish) chapters on Tuesdays and Fridays. There will be... a lot of chapters.

Zari’s personal security budget is just over a quarter of a million dollars annually.

That pays for bodyguards and tall fences and strong gates with high-end locks; just last month she had uniformed technicians crawling across the estate as they installed the latest and greatest motion sensors and cameras, protecting her with layers and overlaps to the point of redundancy.

It’s a hefty investment, but she’s always thought it was worth it. To be secure, to know she was safe, to have control and privacy in her own home.

And now she knows it was nothing but a huge fucking waste of money.

Because even though she has every door locked and every gate closed, it’s 1:47 in the morning and she’s staring at a disheveled blond man in a trench coat sprawled on the designer couch in the middle of her otherwise immaculate living room.

His dirty boots are propped on her sleek, modern coffee table. The whiskey on his breath is warring with the lavender essential oil diffusers tucked discreetly on the wall shelf.

And he’s _smoking_ , of all things.

Zari clutches her silk robe closer around her chest and narrows her eyes.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

He exhales, a long stream of smoke twisting and curling as it rises toward her vaulted ceiling.

“Proving just how much you need me, love.”

His accent is English, but not in a way that brings to mind royalty and high tea and Jane Austen. He’s the other sort, the one that makes her think of battered Doc Martens and fog rolling over the filthy River Thames and a sneering Sid Vicious.

He’s anarchy in the UK, sitting right here in Beverly Hills.

It’s even stranger that he manages to give that vibe despite dressing like an accountant, all white dress shirt and red tie, his free hand crammed in the pocket of his black trousers as he stands, rocking back a little on his heels.

She’d just been heading to the kitchen for a glass of cucumber water, hoping to forget about the nightmare that had woken her. Instead, she’d walked straight into one of the more surreal experiences of her life — and Zari was at the Met Gala when Blue Ivy slapped North West so hard she fell into the champagne fountain. But that was just the usual celebrity nonsense.

Whatever this guy is, it’s something new entirely.

And Zari, despite the extreme oddity of the situation, finds herself ever so slightly _intrigued_.

(Not that she’d admit that.)

(Not ever.)

(Not even to herself.)

“Actually,” she says, flipping her hair back over her shoulders, “I’ve got all the stalkers I need right now. So if you could just see yourself out—“

“I’m no stalker, sweetheart.”

He reaches into his pocket; on instinct, Zari snatches the lamp off the end table beside her and brandishes it toward him like a weapon.

He pauses as if trying to calm a spooked animal, deliberately wiping his face of any expression and raising the hand holding his cigarette in surrender; a fraction of the tension curled in Zari’s shoulders unspools. Slowly, he pulls something from his pocket.

A business card.

“Name’s John Constantine,” he says, offering it to her.

“‘Master of the Dark Arts?’” Zari reads, raising one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be _less_ frightening than a stalker?”

John’s face splits into a grin like a camera flash — blinding one second, gone the next.

“Maybe not, but it’s definitely more useful.”

The lamp in Zari’s hand buzzes and flickers on and off in a rapid staccato despite being switched off; John, seemingly unsurprised, gestures at it with his chin. “That sort of thing been going on a lot, has it?”

She takes a calming breath and sets the lamp down, careful to hide her shaking hand from John. “Must be a problem with the wiring.”

“Except it’s not just happening ‘round here, is it now? It’s everywhere you go — and it’s only going to get worse.”

Something hard and heavy drops like a stone inside Zari’s chest. “What do you know about it?”

“I know it’s not just electrical issues. You’re most likely hearing voices and growls, seeing dark masses out of the corner of your eye — maybe more, depending on how long this thing’s had you.”

Zari feels her heart freezing over at every one of his words, shards of ice piercing the deepest and most vital parts of her.

Because he’s _right._

And she hadn’t told anyone about what was happening to her, had been afraid to breathe a word of it — as if speaking about it out loud might somehow make it worse.

So how could this random stranger know things about her that no one else did?

“You’re cursed, love,” he continues, speaking a little slower, a little lower, as if there’s some magical frequency his voice can reach to ensure it finds its way into her mind. “You’ve caught the attention of something nasty, and I’m here to fix it.”

But Zari shakes her head in denial, whether at herself or at him, she isn’t quite sure. She’d spent weeks hoping she was hallucinating the darkness and hissing and flickering lights, that she had a brain tumor or was losing her mind — because those options were less frightening than believing that the things happening to her were _real_.

That evil existed. That it’s somehow attached itself to her.

“I’m doing just fine on my own,” she manages to say, if not quite believe.

“Sure, yeah, you’re ignoring it, which is doing the right thing for a layperson — there’s a lot of power in that old ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ bit.” He takes another step closer; Zari isn’t sure why but she can’t tear her eyes away from his. They’re dark but burning, a banked fire seemingly half a second away from blazing back to life. “With my help, you can get rid of it for good.”

For a crystalline second his words seem to hang in the air, a tease, a promise—

—a lie.

Because magic isn’t real, and even if it is, it doesn’t appear in a wrinkled white shirt and scruffy chin in the dead of the night. It doesn’t dangle the secret solution to all her problems in the middle of her living room.

Nutjobs do that. Sociopaths. _Conmen_.

Her jaw clenches briefly; she swallows around the thickness in her throat. “You realize that you’re an insane person, right?”

John’s chin drops to his chest for a second, some complicated expression flickering across his face. “Aye, love, barmy I might be — but I’m also the only shot you’ve got.”

It’s an innocent enough statement, but her hackles are immediately raised; Zari Tarazi needs no one for anything, and certainly not _this_ mess of a human being. He’s a criminal, a stalker, and here she is, nearly falling for his nonsense. She knows better.

Her spine straightens; the uncertainty that had clouded her since he correctly guessed about her supernatural affliction burns away into clear, sharp irritation.

“53 million CatChat followers and a multimillion dollar annual income say otherwise.”

Zari’s using her best Bad Bitch voice; John doesn’t even blink.

“You can’t buy your way out of the pickle you’re in, sunshine.” He sits back down, holding his hands out, palms facing her; ash falls from his cigarette and stains her cream-colored carpet. “In fact, I work for free.”

Zari rolls her eyes. “And now I _really_ don’t trust you.”

“Let’s just say I’m after compensation of a more... celestial type. Not that I won’t be needing a place to stay while earning it, mind you.”

Zari sighs. He’s just someone expecting something of her, simply because of her position, her power, and her prominence. She’s seen it countless times since she was a child — it makes no sense for it to disappoint her so much to find it in the vagabond who’s broken into her home.

“So there’s the catch,” she says, sharp as a stiletto.

John waves an arm around, a gesture meant to encompass the entire dark, empty mansion.

“As if you don’t have a spare room or ten.”

“Not ones I make available for stalkers,” Zari says. “Get out. I’m calling the police.”

John sucks his teeth, shaking his head a little — clearly more disappointed in himself than anything else. This trick must work pretty frequently; Zari even begins to wonder if he’s somehow been _causing_ all her strange experiences, just so he could swoop in and “rescue” her. Her eyes narrow even further, until she’s glaring at him out of slits.

“Fine.” John says it in a way that she can actually _hear_ the period punctuating the word, hard and blunt and final.

He stubs out his cigarette in a glass bowl on her coffee table — it was made by some famous artist and cost her six figures. Her designer had picked it out, telling Zari it was a “statement piece” and “would tie the room together” and some other, buzzier nonsense Zari didn’t really listen to. She hadn’t realized how much she actually hated it until she saw John’s cigarette ground into its side, a pile of ash collecting in the bottom of the garishly colored glass.

For some reason, it feels like the most honest thing that’s ever happened under this roof.

A thrill runs through her that she doesn’t particularly want to name, but it’s _strong._ So strong that, despite everything, part of her almost stops him when he turns with a swish of his trench coat and stalks toward the back door.

“I’ll show myself out, then,” he calls just before looking back over his shoulder, dark eyes locking with hers across the moonlit room; deep shadows paint his harsh features in heavy charcoal. “But I’ll be around when you need me.”


	2. Chapter 2

Zari doesn’t file a police report about the break-in in the morning. In fact, she doesn’t tell anyone about her nighttime visitor. She doesn’t know why.

Maybe because her TV had turned itself on when she woke up in the morning, a guttural voice muttering at her through the sound of the static. Maybe because an amorphous black mass lingered at the end of her kitchen island while she was making coffee.

Maybe because there might be some truth in what he’d told her.

* * *

The day passes the way they all do, her life a blur that disappears mostly unnoticed beyond the glowing rectangle of her phone.

But it’s not in her hand now, and Zari’s not sure if this feeling is anxiety or freedom. All she knows is the thrum of the bass pounding in her blood, the sweat slicking her skin, the way her short skirt brushes against her thighs as she dances along to a band she’s never heard of before.

It’s some VIP-only intimate show, the venue a bar so small she can easily see all four walls from her place right in front of the stage. The air is full of pink neon light and rolling smoke, a sparkling haze against the dark shadows filling the corners. In one, she’d swear she sees the swish of a trench coat for the briefest of seconds — but that’s madness.

Her middle of the night guest clearly left more of an impression than she’d like to admit.

This place is hardly her usual scene, but it was the most exclusive event in town tonight, which meant it was the place she had to be.

Zari lets her eyes drift shut and her hips sway to the deafening music, willing it to fill her to her fingertips and spread down the spindled heels of her shoes until it meets the matching vibrations pulsing through the concrete floor.

She’s already filmed a handful of stories, gained a few hundred new followers, and now she’s trying to actually enjoy herself. Not for a camera, not for her assistant or so she’ll have entertaining anecdotes to tell at the next party, not even to meet someone with influence she can add to her arsenal. Just... to live. To breathe. To be inside her body and have fun with the way it feels for once.

She’s not sure she’s entirely succeeding.

For one, she’s all too aware of the eyes on her. She’s spent her life courting that attention, cultivating it, telling herself she loved it and diving into it headfirst, swimming around in it like Scrooge McDuck in his golden treasure.

But it means that authenticity is an unattainable goal, utterly at odds with the life she has chosen to lead.

So she’s about to give up, to head back to her empty, quiet mansion and scrub her face free of this pretense, when some guy spills his beer all over her.

“Ugh, gross,” she exclaims, looking at her soaked skirt in dismay. “That’s so tacky.”

The guy looks up at her and she sees the second he recognizes her, the filthy greed that fills his beady eyes as they rake across her skin.

“I’d be happy to spill something else on you, sexy,” he slurs, his beefy hand reaching out to grab her ass.

Zari jerks back, horrified and disgusted and ready to run—

—but John is just suddenly _there,_ tight fist a blur as he punches the guy in the jaw hard enough to knock him out.

Zari’s heart is racing.

It’s just the adrenaline, she tells herself. It’s not the way he seemingly materialized out of the fog just in time to rescue her. It’s not the smirk he flashes her way or the sharp line of his jaw or the way that stupid white shirt stretches over his strong shoulders.

He’s no different from the hundreds of other men that are perpetually in her orbit, the fans and the fawning masses. There’s nothing interesting there. Nothing at all.

But her mouth must not get the message — she can feel a smile toying at the corners of her glossy lips.

“Oh, how wonderful,” she faux-swoons, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “I get to join the ranks of lucky girls saved by the great John Constantine. Tell me, was he a demon too?”

John rolls his eyes and smiles that somehow already familiar grin, the one that curves around his ever-present cigarette and holds absolutely no humor in it. He shakes out his probably throbbing right hand while his left deftly lifts Zari’s cup of club soda from her manicured fingers, then shoves his knuckles down against the half-melted ice. He winces, face tilted down to look at his busted knuckles.

“No, that was just your garden variety tosser. I’m rather useful as the regular kind of bodyguard, too.” And then he looks up at her from beneath his heavy brow and actually _winks,_ the cocky bastard. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Zari licks her lips without thinking, tasting her lipgloss, and stares down at the unconscious jerk sprawled on the bar floor. A pool of drool is collecting beneath his open mouth.

“Thank you for the help,” she finally manages to say, carefully not looking at John. “But I’m still not hiring you.”

“Fair enough,” he says, taking a drag on his cigarette. Zari flicks her gaze to him, surprised that he doesn’t argue with her. The persistent pink light floods the club, painting his skin and reflecting off his dark eyes; it suddenly feels like there’s too many people crammed in too small of a space, oxygen running dangerously low.

“You’ve still got my card?” John asks.

Zari nods, but she’s frowning at herself. “I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m going to need it.”

He inclines his head, something she doesn’t want to put a name to pinching his expression. “I hope you’re right, love. For your sake.”

They shake hands, the strobing light like a tattoo needle in her eyes, drums pounding in time with her heartbeat. The air around them seems charged, electrified; sparks snap across her heated skin.

And she can’t deny that standing there, breathing in his smoky exhale with his strong, calloused hand wrapped around hers, is the first time in weeks that she actually feels safe.

* * *

She shouldn’t have.

Because two hours later, home and showered and tucked into her soft, cool sheets, _it_ comes for her.

She snaps awake so fully she’s not certain she was ever actually asleep. Body taut as a bow, Zari doesn’t dare to breathe; something is _growling_ , circling her bed.

It’s nearly invisible in the darkness except that it’s an even _deeper_ black, the kind that eats the moonlight, that swallows any goodness or comfort or softness. Its eyes are glowing red embers — they aren’t on her, not yet, and Zari somehow knows that if she meets them she’s as good as dead.

She has no idea what it is. She doesn’t know how it got in, or what to do now. All she knows is that it’s here for _her_.

The growls grow louder, but they’re not like anything she’s heard before; layered inside them are sounds like clanking chains and snapping bones and anguished screams. Dissonant and disparate, Zari can _feel_ the snarling sounds like claws scraping her skull. No physical creature could produce anything like it, and yet she’s absolutely certain that this thing _is_ real, that it’s here, that the danger it presents is terrifyingly _tangible_.

She squeezes her eyes shut and throws the covers over her head, feeling like a frightened child, fumbling for the phone she keeps tucked under her pillow.

The screen illuminates her makeshift cave in bluish light; she hears wood creak and splinter as the thing outside rakes its claws down her bedpost.

Her shaking finger quickly finds John’s number saved into her contacts.

She’s not sure why she added him — definitely didn’t want _him_ to know she had — but she’s so relieved that she could cry. She has always been a woman with resources and confidence, who makes plans and executes them flawlessly, but none of her usual tactics can save her now.

If John hadn’t decided to break into her home, she wouldn’t know anywhere else to turn.

She tries not to think too hard about why she already trusts him with her life, how she knows that he’ll come for her, that he’ll be able to save her. She just lets her fingers fly over the keyboard, keeping her nails from clicking loudly against the glass.

_help_

It’s all she types; she somehow knows it’s all she needs to say.

And he must have been lurking on the property again because, far faster than should be possible in LA traffic, he’s _there_. Her bedroom door bursts open hard enough to bang loudly against the doorstop; she peeks her eyes out from beneath the blanket and finds him storming in with hard eyes and hands aflame, reciting some Latin chant.

Zari doesn’t watch exactly what happens with that _thing_ on the floor; she can’t, too frozen with fear. Instead, she keeps her eyes on John, on the way the firelight flickers over his face, on the quick, precise movements of his mouth, on the small triangle of his chest visible beneath his unbuttoned collar. To her panicked eyes it looks dangerously tender and vulnerable; Zari wants to button his collar and tighten his tie, as if a few extra layers of fabric could offer any protection against the hellish thing John’s currently battling.

His voice rises, shouting over wind that shouldn’t be possible. It whips through the bedroom, tangling her hair and blowing his trench coat back until it looks like a cape flapping behind him.

The fire in his hands burns even higher, the light _blinding_ —

—And then the growling stops.

John shakes the flames from his fingers, shoulders rising as he heaves a deep breath. She can barely see him; the room is once again cloaked in darkness.

Silence rings in her ears.

“Is that it?” Zari asks, sitting up but keeping the duvet tugged up to her chest, not ready to let go of the vague sense of security it offers. “Is it gone?”

“Afraid not,” John says, still bent over a little, as if whatever he did sapped the energy necessary to stand upright. “I have to know a demon’s name to send it to hell, and even then it’s not always that simple. Whatever that was has some right nasty power behind it. I’ve banished it for now, but this is going to take some time.”

Zari nods, feeling like her head is a balloon on a string, floating far above the rest of her body. She’s only distantly aware of the mattress dipping when John sits on the side, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder, the weight and warmth offering whatever small comfort can be found right now.

His voice is a far off rumble, like thunder rolling through a deep purple storm cloud blowing in from off the coast. “You all right, love?”

“No,” Zari says, brittle and hard and straightforward, fingernails biting angry crescent moons into the skin of her palms.

She doesn’t mean to be harsh, but not even her practiced control is strong enough to soften it. She’s terrified in a way she didn’t know she could be, shaken all the way down to the marrow; there’s no room left in her for civility.

Still, she expects him to move away, to hush her, to tell her that no one likes a girl when she’s angry. After all, that’s what everyone else has done any time she dared express an inconvenient emotion.

Instead, John just blinks, his face almost soft with sympathy, like her rage is something understandable, something she’s entitled to. Like Zari is _allowed_ to feel ugliness, to let it consume her until it spews out in hot tears and trembling anger.

She knows in that instant that, no matter his other faults, John is never going to tell her to hide herself away. To be good, to behave, to smile for the cameras.

And it’s that freedom — the air in her lungs, the empty space in which to move and stretch and _exist_ — that truly hooks her. It’s powerful; it’s something she’s been starving for, something she needed even more than the magical rescue. Despite every horrible thing she’s experienced tonight, she can’t help but find it tantalizing.

More than that. It’s _intoxicating_.

“You can start work immediately,” she tells him. “There’s a guest room two doors down on the right — it’s yours.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 💖 Thanks to everybody that's reading along with this! I've loved every single comment so much I wanted to tattoo them on my forehead. 
> 
> (I might do it. I have a big forehead.) 💖

Zari stands over John at five in the morning, the sky outside the drawn curtains still deep purplish black.

He’s sprawled facedown on the Egyptian cotton sheets of her guest bed; the top sheet dips low enough that she can tell he’s naked, the curve of his ass barely hidden under the southward drift of the soft white fabric.

He’s been here a total of two and a half hours and already the place is covered in signs of him — the pack of Silk Cuts on the nightstand, the trench coat and tie hanging from the hook on the back of the door, the smell of smoke and spices and aftershave hanging in the air.

There’s also some kind of strange new symbol over the bed. It’s at least eight inches tall and looks like a stylized eye inside a triangle — Zari would actually think it was kind of cool except that John had carved it _directly into her wall_. Paint flecks and powdery drywall dust are scattered across the headboard and have floated into a pile on the floor, some of it sticking to the bottom of her shoes.

She feels as if reality suddenly splits into two equally persistent streams. One Zari finds all this infinitely irritating; the other one is comparably _intrigued_.

Part of her wants to flip on the light and toss him out on his (admittedly perfect) ass, demonic stalker be damned; a deeper, more insidious part warms and slides beneath her skin, curling up low and whispering that she should crawl under the sheets with him.

She takes a step back, but her lips twitch up in an involuntary smile, her body fighting the same civil war as her mind.

Zari is not a woman accustomed to actually _feeling_ her emotions over much of anything — she prefers to keep them buried down deep under heavy piles of denial and avoidance. So she certainly doesn’t want them now, when they’re such a conflicting, complicated tangle.

John has a tattoo on his shoulder and another close to his elbow; she can’t quite make out what either of them are. It’s almost as if they’re purposely confusing, warded somehow to make staring at them for too long give her a small headache.

Or maybe that’s just a side effect of being around John at all.

_Ugh. Enough._

She just needs him to wake up. He’s nowhere near as interesting when his mouth is running.

She switches on the lamp directly over his face. “Rise and shine, bodyguard. You’re officially on duty.”

He groans and blinks, scrubbing a hand over his face, the other fumbling for the old gold watch resting on the nightstand.

“Bloody hell,” he moans, voice low and rough with sleep as he flops back into the fluffy pillows. “Why am I awake at five o’clock in the sodding morning?”

“Because that’s what time my day begins.”

With what seems like monumental effort, he shoves himself up to a halfway seated position, propped against the headboard. The sheet dips dangerously low on his hips; he doesn’t seem to care in the slightest.

Instead, his eyes are raking slow and hungry over Zari’s spandex-clad form.

“What sort of activity did you have in mind, love?”

He pulls a cigarette from the pack and flips open his lighter; Zari yanks the smoke from his mouth.

“You’re never going to keep up with me if you continue with that nasty habit.”

John grins up at her. “I _am_ a nasty habit, sweetheart.”

“Well, right now you’re supposed to be watching out for me. And I’m going for my morning run, so that means you are, too.”

For the first time since she’s met him, John looks truly horrified.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, when he’s stumbling five steps behind her, smoker’s lungs wheezing and struggling, she knows why.

For the first few minutes, when he’d had enough spare air to speak, he’d done nothing but complain. About California and its incessant sunshine and uncomfortable heat and air pollution; he did a solid ninety-seven seconds bemoaning the blindingly white and far too toothy grins on everyone they passed.

Zari had been thrilled when he was finally winded enough that he couldn’t do more than huff and puff as he followed her up the trail.

She loves it here, running along the edge of Runyon Canyon, her long shadow keeping pace beside her. She loves the breeze ruffling her ponytail, the rising sun chasing the night chill away from her skin, the blood rushing through her straining muscles.

And, when she finally has mercy enough to stop under a bit of shade, she allows herself to fully appreciate the view — both the city sprawling below her and the new bodyguard sweating right in front of her. John’s in shorts and a t-shirt that stretches across his shoulders and chest; everything is firm and shapely and she has no idea why he usually hides it all under that uniform of trench coat and tie.

Dark sunglasses shield his eyes and his hair looks like it’s been victimized by a demonic curse of its own — the blond strands stand up in ways that spite the laws of gravity.

Somehow, it works for him.

He looks so different than he did last night, when he’d been all swirling coat and flaming hands as he banished a demon from her bedroom. It’s almost impossible to believe it happened now, standing in the sunlight with her lungs full of fresh air, endorphins bubbling in her veins.

“Are you sure that... _thing_ will be back?” Zari asks.

“Call it what it is, love,” John answers, still mostly breathless. “It’s a demon. And yeah, it’ll be back, sooner than either of us would like.”

There’s a rustle in the scrub brush a few feet down the hill, a brown bunny foraging for breakfast. Its ears twitch as it listens to the wind, tiny feet leaving faint tracks in the sandy earth. It looks so soft and warm and innocent; it makes no sense that it could exist in the same world as the darkness that’s been stalking her.

“But it can’t be,” Zari murmurs, eyes on the rabbit’s fluffy tail. “Demons aren’t real, that’s not the world we live in.”

“It is, actually,” John says, sounding flinty and far older than he appears. “Always has been. It’s just not something people talk about. Too dark and scary to get dragged out into the light.”

Zari sighs and shifts, tiny rocks on the trail crunching under her Nikes. She watches the sun paint John’s profile, pale yellow light catching on the dark stubble, skimming across the deep lines carved around his mouth. It feels like the exact opposite of when she’d seen the bunny — looking at him, it becomes impossible _not_ to believe in the supernatural. It’s wrapped around him like a second skin; it’s in every word and gesture and exhale; it simply _exudes_ from him.

And it makes her wonder, not for the first time—

“How did you get into it, anyway? All this weird magic stuff?”

John’s fingers twitch and raise halfway toward his chest, reflexively reaching for the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his coat several miles away.

“That’s a long story, love,” he says with a sigh, a shadow passing over his face, “and it’s not one either of us want to get into right now.”

It’s bullshit and they both know it. Zari won’t let him get away with that non-answer for long, but they’ve been standing still for too many minutes already — her heart rate is dropping out of the optimal zone.

For now, she’ll let it slide.

“Fine,” she says, spinning away, enjoying the way it makes her ponytail whirl and bounce. “Don’t want to talk? We’ll just go back to jogging.”

John groans. “I should’ve just let the demon drag us both to hell — it would’ve been less painful than this.”

Zari can’t help it — she laughs as she sprints up the trail ahead of him.

And she would swear she can feel his eyes on her ass the whole way.

* * *

An hour later, back home and showered with two cups of coffee steaming beside them, John and Zari face each other in the middle of the dining room floor.

They sit crosslegged, knees touching, a ring of white candles and some hastily drawn chalk sigils surrounding them. John’s fingers are still coated in white chalk dust; it leaves faint marks on his black pants everywhere he touches.

The curtains are closed; the crystal chandelier overhead remains dark. And Zari is regretting agreeing to the marble floor her designer had suggested, the polished stone painfully hard and cold and unforgiving beneath her.

Her hair is still damp and curling softly around her shoulders; between that and her scrubbed face she feels exposed in a way she nearly never allows herself to be. But her glam squad will be here in half an hour, and they always want to start with a blank canvas.

Besides, John doesn’t seem to mind the way she looks without it. He meets her eyes from just a few inches away; beneath the open collar of his fresh white shirt his throat bobs sharply as he swallows hard.

No, he doesn’t seem to mind the way she looks at all.

“First things first,” he says with a rough roll of his shoulders, “we’ve got to see what kind of demon we’re dealing with.”

“Don’t you just… know?”

“I’ve got a lot of tricks, love, but clairvoyance isn’t one of them. Well, there is a spell, but it involves eating hair and going into cardiac arrest so I try to avoid using it when possible.”

Zari studies him with narrowed eyes, trying to figure out if he’s serious or simply screwing with her, but John just plunges ahead before she can make up her mind.

“I did a basic tracking spell and found malevolent energy attached to you, but more information is always better. I’d like to take a peek at your aura.”

Zari raises one perfect eyebrow. “Is that a euphemism for something?”

John chuckles. “Not this time, unfortunately. But what I’m about to do to you is going to feel a bit… strange.”

“You’re hardly the first man to tell me that.”

And John grins again, this time with genuine warmth and something a bit like surprise, as if he’s unaccustomed to actually _enjoying_ someone and has no idea how to manage it. That smile is like everything else about him — broken and jagged and gone a bit rusty at the edges, old machinery groaning in protest at being forced back into action.

The spell he performs next, though — there’s nothing rusty about that at all.

Words Zari can’t understand flow freely from his lips, his palms turned up and beginning to _glow_ , his dark eyes rolled toward the ceiling. Then he stops speaking and holds his hands over her, hovering inches away, and it feels like she’s swimming in a vat of carbonated water suddenly, millions of tiny bubbles popping and snapping at her skin. It’s not painful, exactly, but it's certainly not pleasant either. So she just grits her teeth and lets it happen, reading the sympathy in John’s eyes.

It's over in just a minute or two, the candles flaring out into darkness and thin streams of smoke.

For a long moment John simply sits, slumped a little, as if the magic drained him somewhat. Maybe it did; it’s not as if Zari knows anything about this world. Maybe it has a cost.

“Well,” she asks, smoothing her hair out of her face, “what’s the verdict?”

“Not great, I’m afraid,” John answers. “It’s a fatum demon. I’ve never actually dealt with one of these before, but I’ve heard about them plenty — nasty little buggers, won’t let up until they stop their target from fulfilling their destiny.” He shakes a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, placing it between his lips. “Bright side is that you must be something special, pet. This thing wouldn’t waste its time on the average bird.”

Zari scoffs. “Of course I’m special. Hadn’t you realized that already?”

John looks up at her from beneath his brows, heat in his eyes, a tiny smile flirting with the corners of his mouth. “Maybe.”

Zari’s heart thumps a little harder, but this time it feels nothing like the side effects of the spell. This time it feels _good._

“So,” she asks, tilting her head, “how do we get rid of it?”

“First we’ve just got to survive. Can’t expel it until it’s weakened by failure — so we’ve got to get you to whatever task it is you’re destined to do.”

“How do we do that?”

John shrugs. “For now? Just do whatever you normally would.”

Zari takes a deep, steadying breath and pushes herself to her feet, then reaches down to help pull John upright. His hands are all hardness — callous and bone and strong sinew — and she’s so distracted by the way they feel against her fingers that she doesn’t react when he stands with more spring than she was expecting. The momentum carries him so close, his body deep into her personal space; she can see each fine line etched around his eyes, smell the smoke and spice scent of him, feel the warmth of his skin radiating against hers.

He stares for a beat longer than would be considered polite, his dark gaze moving back and forth between her eyes, an almost invisible twitch tugging at his mouth.

A thread seems to stretch between them, shining silver and sharply barbed. Zari’s tongue darts out to wet her lips; she watches John’s eyes slide south to follow the movement. It would be so easy to just lean in, to listen to her body instead of her brain for just this once—

—And then Zari blinks and takes a half step back into safety, to a comfortable distance, to where the air seems to hold oxygen again.

She gulps a deep breath and her brain returns to semi-normal functioning, remembering all the tasks ahead of her for the day, her assistant’s impending arrival and the expectations of her fans and the existence of her fake boyfriend and the thousand tiny reasons why everything she was just wanting to do is a truly _terrible_ idea.

“Do what I normally would?” Zari shakes her head a little, almost feeling sorry for him. “Okay, magic man. But I think you’re going to regret asking for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm @hellsstar on tumblr if you want to say hi.


	4. Chapter 4

The next two hours are a whirlwind of hairdressers, makeup artists, nail techs, stylists, and her assistant, Mona. There’s color and light and sound and music; it’s good, it’s routine, it’s got Zari feeling back on solid ground for the first time since the previous night’s attack.

John, on the other hand, looks like he’s been taken captive by a cruel alien species and is being probed in ways that not even _he_ enjoys.

But Zari just mercilessly moves through her grueling schedule — the glam squad, a photo shoot, a podcast interview, her meeting with potential sponsors — with her phone in one hand and John lurking not far from the other.

Through it all he’s a study in restless motion: fiddling with his lighter, stealing sips from his flask, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He paces when there’s room for it, scowls and fidgets when there’s not.

“So,” Mona says as they’re going over the afternoon schedule, watching John stalk across the living room waving around a bunch of smelly, smoking herbs and chanting in a dead language, “interesting new bodyguard you’ve got there.”

Zari is carefully _not_ hearing the tone Mona is using. Instead, she hums noncommittally, keeps her eyes glued to her phone, and scrolls a bit too aggressively. “Well, you know, with the launch tomorrow everything has to be perfect. So I thought tightening security would be a good idea.” She jabs at the screen to scroll again and winds up accidentally liking an over-saturated picture of lipstick wedged artlessly in a candy jar; her lip curls in distaste. “It’s temporary.”

“He’s not exactly one of the big, beefy guys the security company usually sends out.”

“Of course not,” Zari says, “I can’t have the _usual_ anything. My brand is special, and that has to extend to all parts of my life.”

From their spot in the open living room, they have a clear view of John rifling through the mostly-bare kitchen cabinets until he finds a canister of salt, snatching it triumphantly and heading back down the hallway leading to the wing where Zari sleeps.

Where they _both_ do.

“And Mr. Special is going to be _living_ here?” It’s possible Mona is going for nonchalant, but chill has never been a part of her vocabulary. She sounds like a thirteen-year-old girl at a slumber party, starry-eyed and hopped up on a cocktail of sugar, hormones, and cheesy rom-coms.

“Like I said,” Zari says, trying to sound bored, “I’ve decided on a temporary security increase. It includes 24-hour protection.”

John reappears, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair wild, compact body moving with purpose as he crosses the living room once again. The glam squad has set up their enormous makeup cases and blow dryers and curling irons and rolling racks of clothing around her kitchen table; he starts poking around the more glittery bits with an expression that flits between suspicion and intrigue.

“You’ve never had a live-in bodyguard before,” Mona says, leaning in and trying to catch Zari’s gaze. “Unless this one is more… _full service_?”

Zari rests her phone in her lap, the Dragon Girl logo on the case sparkling in the sunlight streaming through the large picture window behind her. She keeps her features carefully schooled. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Right, yeah,” Mona says, and even though Zari knows she's being scrutinized, she can’t seem to tear her gaze away from John. He lifts a round brush from the table; his hands are so nimble and Zari can’t be certain, but she thinks she sees him steal a bit of her hair from between the bristles. _Weirdo_. “But sometimes the heart wants what it wants, you know?”

* * *

Zari _doesn’t_ know, actually.

Her heart has been set on a single thing — her career — for as long as she can remember. She’s never made a choice without considering it through that lens; every single aspect of her life has been carefully selected and tailored to her brand.

Every single thing until John, that is. He’s a glaring deviation, a battered, rough, filthy, clever, sexy, surprising deviation.

Still, she finds that she likes having him there, drifting around the edges of her periphery. Like she’s being haunted by something _good_ to counterbalance the demonic.

(Although using a word as simple as “good” to describe John Constantine feels wrong, like cramming her foot in a Louboutin two sizes too small. She’s just not sure what would fit better. Righteous? Definitely not. Comfortable? Meh. Nothing in English seems to suit the situation.)

(A bit of Farsi whispers at the back of her consciousness, مقدر شده. It’s been repeating on a loop since John read her aura this morning, but she quiets it immediately.)

It’s easy to forget why he’s actually there, what he’s really protecting her from. There are no flickering lights today, no dark masses, no growls or whispers from voices that aren’t there. Maybe it’s actually gone. Maybe whatever John did got rid of the demon permanently and he just told her it wasn’t over in order to have a place to crash for a few days.

The idea should make her angry.

It doesn’t.

And that worries her in ways that have nothing to do with the supernatural.

* * *

It’s late in the afternoon, and she’s supposed to be giving an interview. The lighting is perfect; she’s perched in an uncomfortable chair at just the right angle and pose to highlight all her best features; she’s happy with her dress and makeup; she is fully rehearsed in her talking points for the makeup line she’s supposed to be promoting.

But John insisted on accompanying her. He’s prowling in the shadows on the far side of the studio with his hands jammed in his pockets, a restless collection of hard angles and cutting edges and tightly coiled power.

And Zari can’t seem to focus on anything else.

She thinks what she’s feeling must be simple irritation. She’s not used to having someone lurking in her life; everyone she deals with is paid to be there, and therefore has other concerns, other focuses. But John is just— he’s just there for her. To protect her. And sure, he’s probably got his own reasons for that, but the way he _watches_ her...

She _feels_ it, a physical, tangible sensation across her skin. Maybe it’s pleasure. Maybe it’s like a spider skittering up her spine. She has never really taken the time to examine this kind of feeling before.

It leaves her unmoored, adrift in a sea of confusion.

The only thing she knows for certain right now, watching him pace out of the corner of her eye while praising the virtues of Diorshow Iconic mascara, is that she _hates_ the way he walks.

It’s all swagger, the set of his shoulders and cocky grace of his movements. She understands more than most the need to hide inside of confidence, to fake it in front of everyone to the point where it becomes habit, where the line between the act and reality becomes so blurred it ceases to exist. Looking at him is like seeing herself in a funhouse mirror — everything is different, warped and distorted, but a few core traits… oh, those are entirely too recognizable.

The interviewer makes a bland little joke that pulls Zari back to her task; she laughs along in what she hopes is a pleasant manner. It’s all sort of a blur, but it goes well enough; another few minutes and they’re shaking hands, the interview concluded. Zari stands, smooths the wrinkles from her dress, and clicks across the floor toward John.

Realizing it’s time to go, he rolls his shoulders and shakes out his hands, every movement sharp and severe, harsh the way he always is with himself. It strikes Zari every time she sees it, because it’s so at odds with how he interacts with _her_. Every time John touches her it’s soft, careful, kind.

She reaches his side and wonders just how hard he has to work at that — and if it’s something that should put her at ease, or keep her even more precariously on edge.

* * *

Back home an hour later, she’s waiting for the event planner to arrive to finish going over the details of the next day’s product launch, and John disappears entirely.

Zari realizes he’s missing far quicker than she’d like to admit. (Five minutes, twenty-six seconds.)

She waits another minute and a half, scrolling through her mentions, adjusting the shoulder strap of her yellow crop top, jiggling her right foot as fast as possible.

And then she kicks off her heels and slips out into the hallway, padding silently around the house. She’s definitely not trying to find him, she’s just walking for the exercise, to clear her mind, she’s NOT looking for him—

—so when she glimpses a swish of his trench coat in the kitchen, she hops back and stays hidden around the corner. She wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea, to think maybe she _missed_ him or something.

“Well, hello there,” he says, softer than anything she’s heard from his mouth before. “What’s your name, little one?”

It would be a strange enough thing to hear from John under any circumstances, but he seems to have gone out of his way to avoid talking to the dozens of people circulating in and out of the house today. He’s been skulking around glaring and being conspicuously strange; the charm he demonstrated with her earlier is clearly not worth the effort it would take to extend to her team.

But now he just sounds... _tender_.

She can’t help it; she has to peek around the corner—

—and sees the top of his messy blond head. He’s knelt down, trench coat puddling on her gleaming marble floor, and smiling at the eight pounds of gray fluff that’s batting at the end of his tie.

It seems John has made a friend in Tomaz, Zari’s beloved pet cat. One who usually hides during the days when the whole team is here, because she hates everyone else on Earth.

Everyone except, apparently, John Constantine — exorcist, demonologist, and self-proclaimed nasty piece of work.

Zari rolls her painted red lips together and presses them into a hard, thin line in order to keep from laughing.

“Don’t you worry, little bit,” he says, scratching a loudly purring Tomaz between the ears. “We’ll keep you safe until we get all this infernal nonsense sorted.”

And that’s all Zari hears before she has to slip away. She tells herself she just doesn’t want him to discover her eavesdropping; the truth is that she’s worried the burning warmth in her chest is about to ignite into _flame_.

* * *

“I’m just gonna nip out for a bit of fresh air,” John says that night, after everyone has finally gone home, long after the sun set over the distant hills. Zari has been settled in at her desk in her home office for at least an hour, John seated on the other side of the room and doing something involving a lot of swearing and drinking and tossing something that looks disturbingly like tiny bones in a circle over and over again.

She’s been doing a lot more watching him than actually working; productivity today has been a constant battle of strategic surges and reluctant retreats.

But now he’s standing in the doorway with one hand braced on the frame, a cigarette pinched between the thumb and forefinger of the other. When she looks up at him he waggles it back and forth a bit as if to illustrate his actual meaning.

She rubs at the back of her neck and tilts her head from side to side, trying to work out the tension from being hunched over various screens on and off for the last twelve hours. He watches her from across the room, shirttail half untucked, red tie hanging loose, an extra button undone and exposing a few more inches of his chest.

She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip for half a second before making up her mind.

“It’s fine, John. You can just smoke in here.”

“Right,” he scoffs, gesturing with the cigarette, “with your scented candles and bloody perfume bottles everywhere, I’m sure you’re happy to have some tosser just keep lighting up in your home.”

The darkness seems to press closer despite the sparkling chandelier burning brightly over her desk, and Zari is too tired to keep the mask up any longer.

So she simply blurts the truth.

“I don’t want you to go.”

John blinks and tucks the cigarette behind his ear, reprioritized for the moment, before taking a step back into the office.

“I feel safer with you here,” Zari continues. “So it’s fine. Smoke in the house.” She waves a hand around with a little smile. “Everything’s too new and shiny anyway.”

“Didn’t know you believed such a thing was possible,” John says, the cigarette already in his mouth. He mumbles around the filter, flicking his lighter open with a metallic click. “Glitter seems to be a prevailing part of your _brand_.”

Zari lets an ember begin to burn in the depths of her dark eyes and leans forward just a fraction, the plunging neckline of her top dipping a fraction even lower. “I like older things sometimes. Ones a little rough around the edges.”

John tilts his head and takes a long drag; smoke escapes from his mouth in curls and clouds shaped by his words. “Is that so?”

She just shrugs and goes back to her computer, proud that she manages to keep the blush from rising to her cheeks.

At least, until John perches on the edge of her desk, pinning the cord of her laptop charger under his hip. Her eyes are unable to leave the hard line of his side, drawn to where his white shirt disappears beneath his waistband, her fingertips tingling with the urge to trace the inside of that circle. To feel the warmth of his skin as it stretches over the taut muscle of his abs, maybe let them drift lower and—

“Give me a couple hours tomorrow and I’ll teach you a thing or two,” he says, interrupting her fantasy. “Basic stuff, just simple protection incantations that could buy you some time when the demon comes for you again.” He flicks ash into the flower vase on her desk, looking at her sideways. “Don’t want you being stuck with a bloody git like me in order to feel safe.”

Zari’s heart warms, touched by the offer. Zari’s _brain,_ however, is still half in work mode and immediately jumps to whether she can talk him into filming it as a tutorial for her channel, whether she can expand her brand to include magical protection charms, whether he’ll agree to wear an actual _color_ on camera—

But she knows better than to say any of that.

Instead, she simply shrugs. “Cool. Thanks.”

He nods and stands; she watches his retreating back as he crosses the room and returns to casting his bones.

She can’t help but be struck by how well he fits into her life. He shouldn’t; everything about him is undeniably strange and foreign. And yet, it feels right to have him there, doing all his weird stuff on the periphery of her work, then settling into the quiet peace of the evening together.

She takes a sip of her green juice, hiding her smile behind the bottle.

Zari could get used to this.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s late and Zari is exhausted, but she doesn’t have full glam done every day and it’s an opportunity she can’t afford to waste. Three scripts sit ready and waiting in front of her; she’s determined to pre-record at least that much content before scrubbing her face clean.

Besides, she’s still a little worked up from spending the whole day with John. It’s got her feeling off-kilter — in a good way — as if someone has invented a new color that she alone can see. She’s more inspired than she has been in a long, long time.

Zari smooths the loose curls that are framing her face and checks her image in her phone one more time. Her lipstick is red and flawless. Her yellow crop top looks cheery and pops against the neutral palate of her bedroom. The large ring light standing on the dressing table in front of her reflects twin circles in the dark pools of her eyes.

She’s ready.

Her long, pointed fingernail makes an audible click against her phone screen when she taps the red circle for record.

“Hi, Z Nation, welcome to—“

She thinks it’s some kind of feedback, at first. Electronic interference messing with her equipment, making that low hissing sound like a dozen snakes slithering through the walls where the wiring is supposed to be.

That’s all the warning she gets; then the ring light zaps into darkness with a tiny explosive _pop_.

And then the same thing happens to the lamp beside her bed.

And then the overhead light screams and shatters, and then the one down the hall; within seconds every light in the entire house shuts down in a sputtering, popping shower of bright white sparks.

She shrieks and staggers out of her chair and shields her face with her hands, but it’s over as soon as it begins. And then it’s just her in the darkness, barely able to make out her face in the dim image of her phone’s camera, her features appearing gray and hazy and haunted. The silence in the house is oppressive, a persistent ringing, buzzing sound playing between her ears.

She stops the recording with a shaking finger.

She should switch on the flashlight app or light a candle, she should find the breaker box, she should do _something—_

—But there’s a leaden weight in her chest, and a clammy crawl up the back of her neck. It’s an instinct honed over untold millennia of evolution, one that remembers to stand still, that sometimes freezing in place will keep predators from attacking.

She’s not sure what’s lurking there in the dark for her, but she’s fairly certain it counts as a predator. It’s too late to hide. And she can’t outrun it.

Someone _else_ is running, though.

Footsteps pound down the hall and her bedroom door bangs open; she doesn’t even have time to be afraid before she can make out John’s face.

And just like that, the creeping dread dissipates, the looming darkness driven away. Relief crashes over her like a wave.

He’s wearing nothing but his black boxers and tattoos; he holds his lighter in front of his face, the flame flickering as he moves close enough that he can see her eyes. “You alright then, love?”

She takes a careful, controlled breath and stands a little taller, raising her chin; she hopes the single flame of the lighter isn’t enough light to show him the fear in her eyes.

(Except she’s not really sure he needs any light to see it. He seems to see everything about her — it makes her feel electrified and raw, and she’s not sure whether she hates it or wants to close her eyes and let herself free-fall into it.)

“I’m fine,” she answers, sounding cool, confident, and composed. Her acting coach would be pleased.

"Here,” John says, handing her the lighter carefully, his rough fingers gentle and deliberate on her soft ones, making sure the transfer happens without burning her. “Take this and go light all those fancy candles you keep everywhere.”

“What about you?”

John mutters some word so soft she barely hears it and shakes his hands; they’re suddenly on fire. “Got my own light, don’t I?”

The firelight dances in his eyes; something in his expression makes it all look like some kind of game, like when she was small and playing hide and seek in the dark with her friends during a sleepover. Like he’s just playing around — and he probably is. For a professional exorcist, a demon frying the electricity must seem downright tame.

That fact should probably scare her; instead, it makes him the only thing that seems right in her world tonight.

Zari wonders if that means that she really is losing her sanity after all.

She squares her shoulders and sweeps past him, the lighter flickering with her movement, her footsteps silent. She’d gotten comfy from the waist down since it wouldn’t show on camera — she’s in her favorite yoga pants and a pair of thick, fuzzy socks covered in a pattern of bright green pot leaves. Behrad had bought them for her birthday four years ago; she secretly loves them more than anything else in her closet, but she’d never intended anyone to see.

Of course, she’s not sure John counts as just _anyone._ Not anymore.

And she’s even happier to have him at her side when she steps into the kitchen and the weak flame of the lighter reflects back to her a dozen times over, sparkling off the shining silver blades of every single knife she owns.

They’re standing on edge, driven point-down into the kitchen table; the handle of the largest one is still quivering a little.

“’S alright,” John murmurs, moving past her with a gentle touch between her shoulder blades. “The demon’s bound to have used up all its energy blowing the electricity and staging this little scene — can’t do anything to you now until it charges back up.”

John jerks the knives out of the table one by one, the muscles in his bare arms and back contracting with the effort; Zari wishes she was in the headspace to properly enjoy the show.

Instead, she can’t help but flinch at the sound — the dull thud of the wood when the blade is pulled free, the metallic clatter when John sets it down.

He notices. Of course he notices.

So he turns to her, tilting his head as he studies her again. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t try to hide from him, to pull the persona of Dragon Girl around her shoulders like a heavy cloak and hide all her truths beneath it, but she doesn’t. Maybe she likes the way he stares. Maybe she actually _wants_ him to see her, to _really_ see her.

Right now, that just makes it easy for him to see her fear. John tugs the final knife loose and places it down carefully before walking to her, not stopping until he’s close enough that his breath brushes over her cheeks, his hands resting on her bare shoulders.

His palms are hot, his grip strong; it feels as if his touch _sears_ her, like she’ll be able to trace the exact outline of his fingers against her skin for days to come.

“It wants you weak and afraid, love — that makes it easier to take you over. Can’t let it win.”

The flame of the lighter is barely strong enough to battle back the darkness, making his features even sharper than usual. He looks as dangerous as the blades sitting behind him, every bit as much of a weapon. Zari breathes deep; the air is charged ozone and cigarette smoke and shampoo and sandalwood. She’s vividly aware that he’s wearing nothing but his boxers.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “It won’t.”

He smiles, quick and lopsided, and rubs his palms over her arms from shoulder to elbow and back up. “Good girl.”

* * *

Neither of them actually go back to bed.

John takes one look at the smoking mess of melted plastic that used to be her circuit breaker box, deems it “well and truly buggered,” and tells her to call an electrician in the morning.

And then, by some unspoken mutual agreement, they wind up on the twin couches in the sitting room adjacent to her bedroom, stretched out in parallel lines with their feet toward the flickering light of her gas fireplace.

(The electric starter was, of course, not working, so John lit it by turning the gas on full blast and throwing an enormous fireball at it. Zari had found that process far more terrifying than the actual demon attack.)

John still hasn’t bothered to put on a shirt; Zari, in the confusing duality that so often strikes her lately, both wishes that he would and is _delighted_ that he hasn’t.

The pale leather couch beneath her is smooth and cool, and the firelight plays with the shadows across John’s bare skin, a dangerously twisting tango of orange and black.

Fire and darkness. Glinting steel knives. That lurking presence she’d felt in the dark. Despite how routine the day had felt, she has to admit that the demon isn’t gone. Nothing is back to normal.

And part of her is beginning to suspect it never will be again.

“Why me?” Zari asks, not really expecting an answer. Her voice is small and vulnerable, because the dark seems to ask it of her. Besides, now that she’s gotten a taste for dropping the mantle of her public persona, she’s found that she likes it, the same way she likes sneaking the occasional bite of donut or standing alone on the beach at midnight, imagining herself floating out among the stars. She hadn’t realized just how much weight her life-as-a-business philosophy held until she was finally able to take it off, even if just for a moment. “Why did this thing decide to come for _me_?”

John shifts a little on the couch opposite hers, raising his arms to fold his hands beneath his head. The lit cigarette in his mouth bobs as he speaks, a drunk firefly looping through the half-light. “There’s a million reasons demons attach to people, love, but they all boil down to the same sodding thing. Bloody rotten luck.”

“Not possible,” Zari says, raising her chin a little despite the fact that she’s lying curled on her side facing him. “I make my own luck, and it’s impeccable.”

John turns his head to her and grins that very specific smile that she finds aimed her way more and more lately, the one that’s irritated and fond and amused and intrigued all rolled up into one highly complicated curve of his lips.

It’s no wonder the man has so many lines on his face — his features are constantly waging war with one another. His wrinkles are battle scars, marks carved over a lifetime of the truth fighting against his lies, concealments, and spin. Those are his currencies, his languages, and he wields them so skillfully that most of the time Zari isn’t sure who he’s conning more — his supposed marks or himself.

“Not really how luck works,” he finally replies, soft and a little sad.

They fall silent again for a long time; he stubs his cigarette out in one of the ashtrays Zari had Mona place around the house earlier in the day.

(Among all the other locations, she’d put one on Zari’s nightstand — a presumptive move Zari is _definitely_ not thinking about.)

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you sleep here with me tonight?”

John just looks at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Not like that,” she amends quickly. “Just… to sleep. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.” He takes a deep breath and looks back up at the dark ceiling before asking, a little too nonchalantly, “But is there a boyfriend lurking about with a nasty right hook I should be aware of?”

Zari blinks, the lash extensions she hasn’t removed yet brushing heavy against her cheeks. She can’t believe John doesn’t already know; but then, he doesn’t exactly seem the type to follow celebrity gossip. Maybe if her relationship status was recorded in some arcane magical tome instead of plastered across the internet he’d be a little more aware.

“Yeah,” she answers, strangely nervous. “DJ. But he doesn’t come here often — we can’t be together too frequently or it will cause fatigue.”

John winces, clearly involuntarily; in a split second he’s covered it up, plastering on swagger so thick Zari will wonder later if she ever saw the reaction at all.

“Your bedroom antics are that athletic, eh?”

“Ugh, _no_ ,” Zari says, waving her hand in the air as if to clear it of any lingering sensation of his question. “I mean fatigue with the public. We’re supposed to be #couplegoals and we can’t be if everyone is sick of seeing us together.”

John turns his face to stare at her again, eyes a little narrow, mouth turned down at the corners. Clearly studying her, clearly unhappy with what he finds.

It shouldn’t make her nervous. (It does.)

She shouldn’t care. (She does.)

“What? You don’t approve of a public relationship?” Zari narrows her eyes right back, judging him like he’s the Prada spring line, noting every detail. “What do you care? It’s not like you believe in something as frivolous as _love_.”

She doesn’t tell him the whole truth about her so-called “relationship.” No one knows; she can’t risk the scandal. But for the first time since she and DJ signed the contracts, she _wants_ to tell someone. She wants to be honest about where her heart truly lies.

Or, rather, where it _doesn’t_.

“Think you’ve got me figured out, do you?” John’s voice is crushed glass, rough and sharp and dangerous, but his eyes are the bittersweet liquid heat of melted dark chocolate. She’s drowning in them, unable to draw a steady breath; he pulls another cigarette from the pack and spins his lighter between his fingers before flicking it open. “Well, you’re wrong about that one — I believe in love. After all, it’s just another form of magic, innit? One that’s too dangerous to muck about with.” He clicks the lighter, the tiny golden flame dancing in his breath. “That’s why I try to keep it as far away from a bastard like me as possible.”

John inhales and in the quiet stillness Zari can hear the crinkle of the cigarette paper as it burns, the rush of air and smoke as they’re drawn into his lungs. She stares across the half-lit room and watches his lips purse around the filter; she wonders, not for the first time, what they’d feel like against her skin.

* * *

Tomaz pads into the room at some point; Zari expects her to jump up onto her lap but the cat seems torn between her love for her owner and her new infatuation with John. To compromise, she curls up on the floor squarely between the both of them.

“Traitor,” Zari whispers. She’s not sure if John’s awake or not — they haven’t spoken in a long time — but she can see the smile toying at the corners of his mouth.

“What can I say? The ladies love me.”

“Yeah, that whole recently-fired-accountant aesthetic you’re working with must really draw them in.”

John stares at her, and she doesn’t see him do anything obvious. He doesn’t pose or smile; she’s certain he doesn’t even _move_. There’s just suddenly this heat about him, in the onyx gleam of his eyes, in the soft curl of his lip, in the long, taut lines of his body stretched across the couch. She’s physically aware of him in a way she wasn’t a second ago and _damn it_ that has got to be magic. Nothing about it is natural.

John smirks.

“What about you?” Zari asks, voice a little higher and thinner than she’d like. “Any jealous girlfriends or boyfriends that are going to break in and attempt to strangle me in my sleep?”

“I thought we already covered the whole ‘I don’t do love’ thing.”

“Just because you don’t _want_ to love someone doesn’t mean you don’t.”

John stares at her for a long, long time, silent and still. “Right you are, love.”

“And the opposite is true too, I suppose,” she says, thinking of her own camera-ready relationship. “Wanting something to be real doesn’t make it exist.” She twists her fingers in the dusky pink blanket the decorator had draped artfully over the back of the sofa; she’s not sure she’s ever even touched it before.

John doesn’t say anything to that, and she doesn’t really want him to. Doesn’t want to know the sordid details of his past any more than she wants to share her own. In fact, she doesn’t want to be doing any of this, but the dark and the quiet and the fear seem to be squeezing it out of her, purging her of things she’s kept tightly held for so long.

She just keeps thinking of that look on his face last night, when he’d sat on her bedside and let her break down with fear and anger and having her entire worldview rocked off its foundation. She thinks it might have cracked a wall inside her, letting things long dammed up come spilling out.

“I’ve never really had anyone I could trust, someone that was _mine._ ” She’s said the words before she realized she was going to speak. “Not since I was nine years old. As soon as he was born, my parents always preferred my brother, and he and I have never really been close. And everyone else… I met them all after I was already ‘Dragon Girl,’ so there’s always the question of whether they actually like me or just like what I can do for them. I can never have anything real, because I never know who to trust.”

The words hang in the air, a nearly tangible spiderweb, their touch sticking to every available surface. Part of Zari feels manic, carbonated, and lighter than she ever has; the other part wants to burn the house to the fucking ground just to rid it of the ghost of that confession.

John, predictably unpredictable, acts like she told him some casual anecdote about a party she recently attended instead of stripping her soul bare. “That’s probably for the best given what’s happening to you. This ‘weird magic stuff’ as you call it — it’s taken everyone I’ve ever cared about.” He exhales, slow and measured; she expects to be able to see it even though he doesn’t have a cigarette going, like there should be so much residual ash and tar in his lungs that he can manifest smoke at will. “But you should know, love — it’s not true that you don’t have anyone.”

The words are a bridge stretched across the darkness between them; she feels them as solidly as if he’d reached over and taken her hand.

She smiles, small and fragile and _real_.

And, not too much later, she wraps herself in the pink blanket and manages to drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep. Everything seems to fall away — the turmoil her life is in, the potentially career-making event scheduled for the following day, the lack of her careful nighttime routine of skincare and satin sleep mask and white noise machine and aromatherapy.

Tonight, all she needs is John there beside her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second half of this chapter touches on temporary loss of body autonomy and a lapse in memory, so you might want to skip/skim if you need to in order to keep yourself safe. ❤️

Years of habit have Zari waking before dawn. She rubs at her eyes, lash extensions loose and sticking to her fingers like spider legs. Sighing, she stretches all the way down to her teal-painted toenails, then pushes herself up to a seat. She’s ready to start the day.

John, however, is clearly accustomed to a different schedule.

He’s still sound asleep, sprawled on his stomach across the couch opposite hers, face softer and younger than she has ever seen it before. The couch is too small to contain him comfortably — one arm has fallen off the side, his knuckles grazing the thick carpet. There’s another tattoo she hadn’t noticed before, a triangle on his shoulder blade, and it takes more effort than she’d like to admit to keep herself from leaning over and placing a kiss in the center of it.

The house is quiet and dim and cool and maybe she spends a little too long sitting there watching him sleep, maybe she does a microsession of meditation while matching her breaths to John’s deep, even cadence—

—Maybe these are things she’s not comfortable with admitting to doing, even to herself.

Instead, she silently eases herself off the couch and gently covers John with the chunky knit throw she’d slept under, the yarn still warm from her skin and smelling faintly of her perfume, her fingertips brushing softly against his shoulder.

And then she makes her way to the master bathroom, peeling clothing off as she goes, and stands under the hot spray of her dual shower heads until her skin is flushed a deep pink and her fingertips are pruning, letting the heat and the sound and the pressure beat the unsteady sensation out of her bones.

She can’t have that today. She has to be the embodiment of Zari Tarazi™ at the launch, flawless and absolute. Her entire career has been building to this.

So when the steam billowing in innocent white clouds around her begins to coalesce, she refuses to notice it. Even when it develops clearly defined eyes and a gaping maw ringed with sharply jagged teeth.

Even when the white noise of the water transforms, hissing words in a language no human tongue has ever spoken.

It’s her imagination. It’s a hallucination brought on by stress and last night’s attack and a night spent sleeping on a couch instead of a proper bed. She squeezes her eyes closed and shuts the water off, breathing a little too hard in the sudden silence that’s pockmarked by the small splashes of water dripping from her skin.

Inhale, exhale.

Her shaking hands are braced against the tile wall, her toes scrunched in an attempt to grip the wet floor. She takes another breath. And another.

There are no more voices now. And, when she finally steels herself enough to open her eyes, there is no face leering at her, either.

It wasn’t real.

Right?

She shoves her wet hair off her forehead and tries to laugh at herself, the sound shaky and thin even as it echoes across the cavernous bathroom.

This is ridiculous. She’s been spending too much time with John and it’s making her paranoid.

_It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you_ , she hears inside her head, the words whispered in his accent.

She suddenly wishes he was there in the shower with her; if she has to hear his warning, she wants to at least be able to see his face, feel his reassuring warmth against her skin.

Shit. She needs to calm down. She needs armor. She needs tailored clothes and a blow dryer and four inch heels. She needs coffee.

So she dresses quickly and makes her way into the kitchen, where Mona and an electrician and her complicated Starbucks order are all waiting for her.

Where she can wrap herself up in the protective shell of Zari Tarazi™ once again.

* * *

John appears half an hour later while she’s sitting at the kitchen table going over the day’s schedule with Mona. The stab marks from the previous night’s knife display form a violent constellation in the wood’s glossy finish.

Her half-empty cup of coffee sits steaming over a cluster of cuts and John shuffles straight for it, Tomaz winding around his bare ankles and purring.

He’s disheveled and bedheaded and _adorable_ — which is not a word she would have ever thought could apply to a master of the dark arts, but there it is. He’s got a cigarette dangling from his lip and his stubble is longer and darker than yesterday; his feet are bare, his robe hanging open over his chest and boxers.

He steps up close behind her and leans over, his right hand coming to rest on her shoulder almost absently, like this is just a thing they do now, sharing space and skin. Warmth radiates off of him against her back and smoke curls toward her face; she doesn’t even realize that he’s pilfered her coffee cup until he’s raising it in a mock toast and saying, “Cheers, love,” in a rough rumble beside her ear.

And then the warmth and touch are gone and he’s taking an enormous gulp of _her_ latte. 

“Hey! I was drinking that,” Zari protests.

He swallows, loudly. “Believe me, sunshine, I’ve had far worse things in my mouth than your backwash.”

“That was _not_ my point,” she says, but Mona just pulls another Starbucks cup from the carrier and slides it toward her.

“I wasn’t sure what your new, uh, _bodyguard_ liked, so I just ordered two of yours this morning.”

“Thanks,” Zari mutters, glaring at John over the lid.

He takes another giant swig, followed by a long drag on his cigarette. The robe slips to the side a little and Zari can see his left nipple, which is definitely _not_ something she’s thinking about.

“So, no jogging for us today?” John asks.

“I’m sure you’re terribly disappointed,” Zari says, “but no. There’s not time. Glam will be here in ten to start getting me ready for the event.”

John raises his eyebrows, face vacant and clueless. Of course. Practically the entire _world_ has been buzzing about Zari’s impending triumph, but why would that news have reached John _Sorry-Love_ - _I’m-Only-Versed-In-The-Arcane-And-Profane_ Constantine? She’s got to learn to stop expecting him to operate like a normal human.

“Today is the launch of my first shoe line,” she explains. “It’s a huge event, with tons of fans and press — it’s basically all _anyone_ has been talking about for _weeks._ It’s going to be major.”

John frowns as he sets the coffee down, grinds his cigarette out, and jams his hands into his robe’s pockets. His plants his feet wide, as if he’s bracing for impact.

“That’s not a good idea, Zari.”

She pauses and meets his gaze — he used her actual name. Not _love_ or _pet_ or _sweetheart_ or some other ridiculous term.

Well, then. He must be _serious_.

And he doesn’t back down, responding to her widened eyes with a tone as granite as the countertops. “The way this thing is escalating, a public spectacle might be just what the de—“ John chokes on the word, cutting his eyes at Mona’s raptly attentive face. He clears his throat and tries again. “Just what the _stalker_ wants. You could be playing straight into his hands.”

“I’ve been working on this project for over a year,” Zari says, every bit as hard as John, standing to the full height her heels give her, eyes level and cutting as they stare into his. “I can’t walk away now. I _won’t_. So you can either come and help protect me, or wait here. Either way, I’m going.”

It’s a staring match for twelve whole seconds, a battle of dark eyes and fierce wills, each searching for any sign of weakness, any indication that the other is ready to back down before drawing blood.

John blinks first.

And so they go.

* * *

“Listen,” John tells her from his spot sprawled across the seat opposite hers in the back of the limo, “you stay close to me in there, yeah? No taking off on your own, no unnecessary risks. And you let me open all doors and be the first one that walks through.”

“Why?” Zari asks, examining her nails. “That old saying about ‘age going before beauty’?”

“Ha ha,” John deadpans. “No. It’s so that any threat lurking on the other side has to deal with me before it can get to you.”

“That’s surprisingly like something a real bodyguard would say.”

“I _am_ a real bodyguard. For you, anyway.”

Zari snorts and waggles her fingers at him — a gesture encompassing the entirety of his whiskey-scented mess of rumpled clothing and stubble and nicotine, his dark sunglasses firmly in place despite the heavy tint of the limo’s windows.

(It’s a sight she's quite enjoying, actually, but John’s ego is a ravenous beast that would never let it go if she were to show that particular card.)

So instead, she blows him off with a careless, “You’re just a soul-guard, at best.”

“Oh, believe me, love — I’ve got to protect every bit of you. That demon will do plenty to your body, too, if it gets its way.”

And just like that, Zari is done teasing. She can feel the blood draining out of her face and she can see the second John recognizes his mistake, scrambling to cover.

“But we’re not going to let that happen,” he says quickly, leaning toward her and resting a hand on her forearm. There are callouses on his palm, hard against her gleaming, moisturized skin. They scratch at her in a good way, the touch grounding, real and secure. She rests her other hand on top of his, holding it in place. “Because you’re going to tell me at the first warning sign, yeah? You see anything weird, you smell anything strange, or you just _feel_ like something is off, you let me know immediately. You understand?”

She inhales and licks her painted lips; lifting her hand from his, she reaches over the space between them and adjusts his collar, straightening his tie a little. She can’t help but note how his throat bobs at her touch, how the reaction thrills through her, fizzing like a million tiny champagne bubbles bursting against her skin.

It strikes her, yet again, how inexplicably attractive she finds him. The way his eyes burn like embers when he looks at her, the way his voice is an accented rumble, like the tumble of a rockslide. The way his tongue curves around words like someone who fully appreciates what they are, who understands the power they can hold. The sculpted body he hides under those unkempt clothes, like a delicious secret that only she knows.

She’s a woman who likes to control the game in her relationships, but John refuses to play by her rules — instead, he keeps upping the ante. Like now — not to be outdone by her hand still resting high on his chest, he gently brushes a stray hair out of her face, his fingertips lingering, drawing delicate lines of fire over her temple and cheek and across her jawline before softly drifting away.

The limo stopped moving at some point; Zari doesn’t even notice until John stops touching her.

“Well,” she says leaning back a few inches so she can breathe a little more evenly and try to plaster on some sort of composure, “in the interest of disclosure I should tell you that I see something weird right now.” She relishes the panicked look that flashes across his face for the half-second before she pokes her finger into his chest and he catches on to the joke. “ _Really_ weird. He smokes like a dragon — which is actually very on-brand for me — but his drinking habits and fashion sense are appalling. And he’s been following me around like a demented stalker for _days_ now.”

John smiles, wry, and reaches for the door handle. “So you think you’re a comedian now, do you?”

“I have many talents.”

He opens the door and climbs out, holding it for her. “Oh, I’m sure you do, sweetheart.”

And maybe Zari intentionally moves past him an inch too close as she climbs out of the limo, her fingers trailing lightly across his abdomen, flicking at the end of his tie. And maybe she feels his breath hitch at the contact, maybe she lets herself feel the way it electrifies her blood.

But she won’t let herself revel in it for long — today matters too much.

It’s her first foray into her own fashion line, something that, if successful, could launch her career into the stratosphere. Something that could win her enough money and clout to stop hustling quite so hard all the time, that could allow her a bit of breathing room to relax, to focus on social issues that matter to her and possibly make a real difference in the world.

Somehow. She just hasn’t quite worked out what that difference will be yet. Or precisely what issues she cares about, really. All she knows is that she wants to help; she has to trust that she’ll recognize her destiny when it presents itself.

For right now, she has a completely different opportunity to seize.

She looks across the sidewalk at the door to the pop-up shop that’s been set up at the Grove; the sun is so bright today it bleaches the color out of everything and stings her eyes. Sweat beads on her skin as she squares her shoulders and balances on her heels, drawing deep lungfuls of the balmy air. _They’re just shoes,_ her mother had told her when Zari had foolishly called to share her good news last month, once everything was finalized and the launch date set. _It’s not like anything you do really matters._

Except it does. Until a few days ago when she was attacked by a demon, today’s launch was the thing that mattered most in her world.

It might still be.

She clicks across the pavement quickly, only hesitating when she reaches the side door. She can see her reflection in the sunlit glass, and it’s her face — her perfect brows and careful highlight and flawless lipstick — but it slices at her gut.

Because it’s also undeniably _wrong._

Zari isn’t smiling right now, she knows she’s not, but the reflection looking back at her _is_. A huge, garish grin that looks more like a bloody slash across her face than an expression of mirth. Zari blinks, breath caught in her throat, fingertips rising to her cheeks—

—and the reflection is normal again. It’s just her own familiar features, shocked but beautiful, and her fingertips shaking beside her contoured cheeks.

The moment is over as quickly as it began. Just a flash, a hiccup — nothing. It was nothing.

John, thankfully, didn’t see. He seems to simply believe she stopped because she’s actually listening to him and waiting for him to get the door.

“You stay close now,” he murmurs as he steps up beside her, then pushes it open. She’s the only one who notices the faint sparks spitting across the fingers of his free hand, fire ready to be summoned if he doesn’t like what awaits him on the other side.

(She’s certain that he doesn’t, but not for the demonic reasons he’s worried about. The source of this particular discomfort is all too human.)

Because, as soon as she appears, they’re surrounded by dozens of flashes and the shouts of voices, all calling variations on her name and Dragon Girl. The event has been carefully planned so she can step directly into the center of the display, photographers and reporters contained in a roped-off side area, with her customers lined up eagerly outside the front entrance.

It looks exactly the way she had imagined it; everything is going to go as it should.

She’s going to give a little speech, sign some autographs, pose for pictures, and sell a fuckton of shoes. John’s going to hover right beside her the whole time, arms crossed, glaring at anyone who so much as looks at her sideways.

It’s going to be fine.

And it is... for a little while, anyway.

* * *

Ten minutes in, Zari is seated at a table signing autographs, smile firmly in place, when suddenly the Sharpie in her hand stops inscribing her standard message of _Soar like a dragon, xoxo Zari,_ instead scrawling a string of bold, harsh profanity. She hastily scratches it out, replacing the shoebox with a fresh one before anyone can see exactly what happened, but she can’t quite seem to catch her breath.

(When she does inhale, she smells the first hint of something strange, like rotten eggs. Sulfur. Brimstone. It’s bizarre and foul — and it only seems to be getting stronger.)

Three minutes later, she poses for a selfie with a fan. She glances at the screen, frowning when she realizes that she looks a little pale — but it’s nothing compared to the bone-white of the ghostly face that’s captured in the image, hovering over her right shoulder. It looks remarkably like the one she’d hallucinated in the shower steam this morning. She gasps and lets go of the phone; she doesn’t have time to delete the photo before the fan puts it in her jacket pocket and disappears into the crowd.

Two minutes after that, Zari would swear that someone is standing directly behind her. Someone large and hot, with rank breath and long fingernails; someone who yanks on her hair and claws at the back of her neck. She whirls around and there’s no one there, but when she touches her neck her trembling fingertips come away bloody.

And that’s it, that’s the final straw. This isn’t how she wanted the event to end, but she can’t afford to risk causing a scene. She goes to stand, to tell John, to leave—

—But it’s too late. The stink of sulphur surrounds her, her vision going yellow and hazy before she blacks out entirely. Her limbs stiffen as she feels something else seizing control of her synapses; she tries to scream but there’s something thick and oily clogging her throat—

—and then she’s gone.

* * *

All Zari knows is blackness until she comes to, John’s left hand gripping her shoulder, his right resting on the side of her neck, thumb moving in a soft, small, soothing arc across the hinge of her jaw. His worried face is inches from hers; the second her eyes meet his, the brittle darkness in them seems to soften and warm, volcanic rock heating back to molten lava.

“What happened?”

He strokes her hair and frowns, relief bleeding into sympathy. “Demon took your body for a spin, I’m afraid. Caused a bit of a scene.”

His words aren’t making sense. She was at the launch, she wasn’t feeling well, she was going to tell him—

And then she blinks and looks around her. At glass shards and drywall dust, at smashed cameras and crumbled displays and melted shoes and not a single person. She can hear them though, their screams and shouts in the distance, and closer — worse — the hissing whispers of gossip.

She has no idea what happened, but she’s perfectly clear on the fallout. This was supposed to be the most important day of her career. Of her life.

And she’d ruined it.

“Oh my god,” she mutters, looking around her in despair.

“Don’t go asking Him for help, love. That right bastard had nothing to do with any of this.”

The air reeks of smoke and and sulfur; there’s a streak of soot across John’s cheek. She rubs it off with her thumb and he leans his face into her hand, letting his eyes fall closed. The tension visibly drains from his hard shoulders.

“Is anyone hurt?” Zari asks, terrified of the answer. “Did I—?”

“No. I cast it out of you before that could happen. It’s just a temporary fix, unfortunately, but it’ll do for now.”

“You… cast a demon out of me. At my product launch. With all the fans, and the phones, and the _cameras…_ ”

“Yeah, that might have looked a bit strange.”

Zari should care. She knows she will later, when she’s watching the footage on YouTube over and over again, filling in the time that is still, for now, blissfully blank. But right now she’s just curling and flexing her fingers, watching the movement, making sure it responds to her brain’s command alone. Her skin feels stretched out, baggy, like it was spandex that had been worn by someone several sizes larger than she is.

Because it _was._

She can taste bile. She can’t decide whether or not to be grateful for the blackout, for the fact that she doesn’t have memories to match the things she sees and feels.

It takes her a while to realize that she can’t stop shivering, the thought coming slow and thick, stumbling through the fog blanketing her mind. Her teeth are clacking together like a typewriter with a stuck key.

“You’re alright, now,” John murmurs over and over, keeping his touch on her even as he shrugs first one arm then the other out of his coat. He wraps it around her, pulling the lapel tightly against her neck, thumbs grazing over the underside of her jaw, eyes searching hers for something he clearly isn’t finding.

Zari will be grateful for it later. Right now, the most she can do is turn her face into the collar and breathe in the memory of his scent trapped in the fabric, take comfort in the now-familiar smoke and sage and aftershave.

It should be her next fragrance, she thinks. Then she remembers that she probably won’t have a next fragrance. Her career most likely ended right here.

She needs to escape. Immediately.

But the side entrance she’d come through is blocked; through the cracked store windows she can see the throng of fans and paparazzi.

“Only way out is through, love,” John tells her, squeezing her shoulders and squinting a little with resignation. It deepens the lines at the corners of his eyes, makes him look for a split second as tired as she feels.

It helps, strangely. Makes her feel a fraction less alone.

“Okay, but get me out of here before the shock wears off,” she pleads. “Once I actually start processing this I’m not sure I’ll be able to move.”

So they stand together as an unbreakable tangle, Zari wrapped in his coat and arms and warmth. John is the only reason she’s able to stay upright; he’s muscling her soft and pliant body, holding her flush against his hard side.

She takes a single step forward.

Then another.

Then another.

The glass crunches under her heels. A snapped electrical wire buzzes and sparks where it dangles from the ceiling. She nearly stumbles over a broken shelf, the beautifully designed shoes she was here to launch now scattered around like some kind of bizarre art installation.

They cross the threshold, the door long gone, and the voices and crying and sirens grow louder through the buzzing in her ears.

“Oh god, the cops are here,” Zari whispers, imagining herself in handcuffs in a police interrogation room, trying to explain demonic possession in a way that won’t get her confined to an asylum for the next thirty years—

“I already handled it,” John practically growls, eyes like burning coal. “Bastards won’t bloody touch you.”

She doesn’t ask what him “handling it” entails. From the look on his face, it’s entirely possible he’s transmogrified the entirety of the LAPD into hideous tentacle monsters or something.

She almost wishes he’d do the same to her.

They’re in the sunshine now, but Zari can’t feel its heat like she could before. It’s just one more bright thing to scuttle away from, like the dozens of flashes popping off as John guides her through the throng of paparazzi that have gathered.

Zari stops looking, stops listening. She disconnects until she floats in a sea of blackness.

She doesn’t feel the ground beneath her heels, ignores the air filling her lungs. There’s just her and her too-large skin, existing on a separate planet from the percussive flash of a thousand cameras and the distant dull roar of a cacophony of voices.

More than anything, there’s John.

The comforting protection of his coat over her shoulders and the solid strength of him at her side, so close she can feel the flex of his muscles and tendons against her. The warm steel of his left arm across her back pulling her into him, the firm but tender press of his fingers into her waist.

His right arm is raised in front of them, shoving people back, tossing cameras, clearing a way through the throng of paparazzi. He’s shouting something but she can’t tell whether he’s casting magical curses or just hurling a barrage of British profanity at the vultures here to pick clean the bones of her career. She finds she doesn’t really care.

Because right now, he’s the only thing on this otherwise barren world that’s real to her.

So she watches his profile as he steers her to the curb; moving in slow motion, she loses everything except the hard set of his eyes, the sharp cut of his jaw. She lets him bundle her into the backseat of the waiting limo and she’s cold and lost for the half second before he’s sliding in beside her.

They were just here. They were sitting here flirting and teasing and the launch was still ahead of her and things were good and promising—

—And now they’re bruised and battered, the rubble of her career falling down all around them.

John doesn’t move to sit on one of the limousine’s other seats like he did on the ride over. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t reach for his flask; he just keeps her tucked into his side, his arms wrapped tightly around her with his chin resting on top of her head the whole drive home.


End file.
